


Downfall

by simaetha



Category: The Silmarillion and other histories of Middle-Earth - J. R. R. Tolkien
Genre: Akallabêth, Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Gen, Númenor
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-04-11
Updated: 2015-04-11
Packaged: 2018-03-22 09:56:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,382
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3724561
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/simaetha/pseuds/simaetha
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The AU where Sauron surrenders after Númenor falls: what it takes to get there.</p><p>
  <i>Your love for them is ruinous. It will ruin them and you.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	Downfall

This is what happens after the end.

You sit in the midst of sea and sky, on a tiny island of tumbled white rocks and wind-swept grass. Around you the water is calm as glass, a glittering silver mirror; the sun is a white blaze in the east.

And the mortal lies very still, caught in the moment of death, when the ocean's rage drove bone and seawater into her lungs; her spirit loosed from the cage of her body to whatever waits for her pathetic kind, into a darkness not even the gods know in full.

You don't know why you care.

You sit by the edge of the waters and sing, your voice an aimless thread that patterns together with the light and the waves and the cry of gulls. You use your fingers to comb out your hair. You wait. The heat of the day rises around you, inexorable.

Eventually, you see a sail on the horizon, coming steadily in from out of the west.

***

When did things change?

Candlelight, a soft golden flicker that leaves dark shadows at the edge of the room.

You lean over Celebrimbor, your hair falling like a curtain around you, shutting out your surroundings; you feel almost tender towards him.

"Tyelpë," you breathe softly, stroking your fingers along the line of his jaw. "Tyelpë, you must only tell me. All will be well."

It has only been hours; but the hours have been a very long time for him, and as he shakes his head weakly you see the tears leak from his eyes. Your poor elf; you have treated him so harshly.

"Just a word, my dear one," you say. "All this can end at once. You needn't make me hurt you like this; just say the word, and I will set everything right."

But he only hisses rejection at you, and you feel real anger rising as you take up the knife again.

Is it then, when possessiveness coils inside you, making you cut too fast and too deep? When your rage and affection twine together, your own weakness lashing you on, so that you flinch away from hurting him, and then strike all the harder for it?

Was it then, that love stole into you like the worm in an apple, like a sickness that empties you from the inside?

***

Or was it earlier, when you said to Eönwë, _I regret -?_

And you are sorry, truly: for the plans that came to nothing, the great works that ended; for the time and craft and dedication that came in the end to this; for the shattered land, your allies imprisoned or fled, and Manwë's herald standing above you in righteous judgement; for the words in your mouth that are as much as saying, _I have lost._

This is not loss, but you do not know it yet.

Or earlier still than that, when Melkor said, _greatest of all my servants_ , and you realised that the word he meant was _servant_ and no more?

Was it then that your conviction began to crack within you, leaving weakness ready to spread?

***

Easy to love Númenor, and all its inhabitants; easy to love Ar-Pharazôn, and his foolish wife Tar-Míriel; easy to love what they will do for you.

And you love them so much that you will consume them entirely, swallow them up within you and make them yours.

This is your greatest plan, elegant and inspired; the coming together of long, patient work with delighted improvisation; that perfect confluence of circumstance that brings forth genius.

You rise from captive to priest-king. You bow your head and cast down your eyes in submission, and Ar-Pharazôn adores you for it, as you knew he would; before long you sit at his right hand, and your words drip sweet as honey into his ears.

Still you cannot root your sickness out.  Numenor offers you its devotion in the arms of its soldiers, raised at your command; in the voices of its people, who learn from you to sing the praises of Melkor and his darkness; even in the bodies of its heretics, which it offers up so readily for the burning.

When was it that they drew you towards kindness?

It was already too late; you could not help but respond to their grovelling affections, their useless, sincere worship.

****

You feel sorry for them. You find touching their resentment of the Valar, which is also rooted in their love, a kind of helpless futile admiration of the lands of the blessed; an admiration that mixes so headily with their passions and fears, their pitiful terror of the unknown that waits at the end of their swift little lives.

Even your lies hold compassion. You cannot truly hold back their deaths, but have you not given them hope, touched their existence with a purpose greater than their own?

You set out to help them. You teach them the arts of metal, of stone, of how to refine and alloy the ores beneath the earth; you teach them spells of power for the forging of their weapons and the shaping of the hulls of their ships; you teach them what you know of the seas and the airs.

Your love for them is ruinous. It will ruin them and you.

***

Even your enemies you have a care for. Poor Tar-Míriel, and her deluded band of followers, supplicants to the Valar, who believe their devotion will be rewarded; while they scorn you, the living god who walks their shores and hears their prayers.

You feel sorry for her, too. Míriel is very young, and very ignorant; they are all so very young. Still you correct her followers, where you can; gently, lovingly; bringing them to understanding by the knife, and the lash, and the flames.

You have patience. You think you have time.

***

The war-trumpets. The storm.

The wave.

The war of Númenor against Aman is your greatest triumph and your greatest failure. It is your triumph from beginning to end; it is your mind that moves the Númenorians from resentment to open battle, your hands that instruct them in the making of weapons and fleets to bring against the warriors of Aman, your words that set Ar-Pharazôn's fleet in motion. It is your triumph that Aman itself cannot stand against your people.

It is your failure that you did not anticipate the Valar's cowardice.

It is your failure that you did not see into the mind of Illúvatar, that strange remote parent you knew once, but no longer; who steps in at the last, and overturns the gameboard, when he sees his favoured players cannot otherwise win the game.

***

This is loss.

You feel the weight of Illúvatar's anger at the last, and flee: vaster and more inhuman than Manwë or Melkor, the scalding wrath of a Creator-God against which you are small and fragile as the flickering spirits of the mortals who scurry about you.

The Temple shudders and falls into the abyss; the streets shake; the waves surge, froth, draw back from the shore in the van of the great wave that follows after.

You think: _If I can make it to high ground, I will save what I can from out of this wreck, even if it is only one foolish mortal child, who will not appreciate my kindness to her._

But you hold out your hand, and Tar-Míriel takes it, nonetheless.

Your kindness saves nothing.

***

You have played your best and been outdone. You have thrown your forces against the gods themselves, and the gods have shrunk away; but when the challenge came at the last, it was one you could not meet.

What you mean to say to Eönwë, this time, again, is, _I regret. I have lost._

Meaning fallen Númenor; Atalantë; Akallabêth; meaning the cities fallen into the waves; meaning the useless devotion, the pointless worship its people poured out at your feet, that you spent like water; meaning the faith of its people that they gave to you unstinting; meaning the love that weakened you, the kindness you never meant to show.

Meaning you could not save even the least deserving, not even one foolish child who was always faithful to the Valar, and not to you.

You say, _I regret -_  
  
  



End file.
